#also not to mention the pyramid quest in the desert where (worst npc) tirzad is like 'we cant trust these two (his bodyguards!!) -

[kyogre-blue]

Doing Golden Slumber on my alt for... furnishing reasons, mostly. 

Surprising that wind gliders seem to not be an international thing? Yes, the desert has long flat stretches, but there’s a lot of cliffs too, so you’d think the eremites would be familiar with them. And no, you don’t need a Vision to operate one. Former ill girl Anna in Mondstadt gets a gliding license after becoming an adventurer, and she’s just an NPC. 

This, combined with how Tirzad’s sister worked on the Scarlet Sand Slate, which is also the same research that Jebrael’s wife was pursuing (with the same slate??) made me sure that they’d turn out to be the same person. I am still shocked that this isn’t the case. 

I wonder if that was the plan originally but the writer changed it later? 

Given how Jeht is dragged into the Tanit mess because she has nowhere else to go, I suppose they couldn’t have given her this long-lost relative on the side while still barreling into that plot. Tirzad is a spineless little weaner, but tbh I think he’d still be better than the Tanit. 

(fun fact I just found out from the wiki: Jeht is mentioned in some notes you can find in 3.6, which says she’s formed her own mercenary group to hunt down that blind dude from the falcon world quest. That’s something, I suppose, though not really the direction I’d want for her)

I missed screenshotting this in-game because I’m buttonmashing most of the time, but I did a double-take when I processed this properly. 

The traveler has a backpack?? And that’s where we’re keeping our carrots and cabbages? 

Combined with Venti citing no pockets as a reason for why he misplaced his invitation during Irodori and Enjou knowing how much mint we’re carrying around, it seems like the thing with characters being able to pull out stuff (including weapons) from some pocket dimension is not an actual thing that exists in Teyvat and is rather just a player-only visual shorthand. 

Well, not that you can entirely trust quests to correctly give worldbuilding details. See: GAA 1 Paimon not knowing what waypoints are until you activate one on the island, while in the very next patch, Katheryne cites you using them to teleport around as an obvious thing. 

This is so weird to me, in light of Dirge of Bilqis. 

Look at this thoughtful, gentle perspective on the desert. Jeht loves it, she loves the sand and sees hope in the desert. Look at the significance she gives Benben. Look at how kind she is even to Tirzad. 

I know you can say that her time with the Tanit made her change, but it just doesn’t feel like two parts of the same story. 

I really, really wonder if Jeht was not originally part of the Tanit plotline and got written into it at a fairly late point for some reason. Maybe she replaced a separate character that was originally supposed to be a new NPC? There’s several reasons I could imagine as to why this might have been decided on...

But I suppose there’s no way to know. 

At the start of the quest, Tirzad refused to even consider taking opinions from non-academics, so he’s... slowly growing... VERY slowly. (This is at the double pyramid, so still only like halfway through.)

One thing I do like is that Paimon and Traveler are very able to call out that Tirzad is annoying and just plain wrong. Jeht and Jebrael don’t hold back either, and Jeht is the one who is generally portrayed as the middle ground, “correct” option in the NPC group, so this is pretty much writer-endorsed. 

This is really nice compared to Liloupar in Dirge, who gets maybe a couple half-hearted admonishments about calling everyone servants or worse and suggesting they should be in chains. 

Seriously, how are these two quests supposed to be two parts of one story...

I wouldn’t call Golden Slumber unapologetically hard-hitting, but it’s obvious enough with what it shows that you can’t call it accidental. It definitely wanted to say that academics steal from native people and are barely different from Treasure Hoarders in the worst case, that they make unfounded assumptions and refuse to consider any alternative perspectives, that they are prejudiced against native people, rude and entitled... Seriously, this is spelled out directly. 

It’s a hell of a thing, compared to Dirge of Bilqis and the Tanit. Man. 

Anyway, I got the furnishing I wanted, so we’ll see how much I manage to progress after this.